Sunday Stills has gone buggy! I think I got lucky this week and found mostly pretty bugs…

Some sort of brown spider… I see them in the garden a lot; we usually call them Daddy Longlegs but I think they might be something else. Anyone here a spider expert?

One of the numerous ladybugs farming aphids in the thistle plants around the compost piles. I didn’t even notice until later, when I loaded the pictures, that he had tiny dew drops on him.

Found a male Stream Bluet resting – hunting? – in the middle of the mud puddle that serves as the tadpole pond.

Red-Shouldered Ctenucha. I’d never seen this moth before; I thought it might be related to the Cinnabar moths, since some of the young caterpillars are munching on the leaves above it, until I looked it up and discovered it had a bright blue body (this guy kept his wings closed while I was watching).

Female Twelve Spotted Skimmer

Male Twelve Spotted Skimmer.

Male Variegated Meadowhawk. The dragonflies really seem to like this particular post, which is in the middle of one of our field gates, though I’m not sure why. I went out a couple times today armed with the camera and hung around for awhile but nobody wanted to pose. I saw at least five or six zooming back and forth over the hay field but couldn’t keep them in the frame long enough to get a decent shot of them in flight!

It’s that time of the week again! This week’s challenge is no zoom a.k.a get creative and use the original zoom – your legs. I never really realized how much I actually rely on my camera’s zoom, even it’s the tiniest magnification.

Speaking of cameras, the SX20 is going into semi retirement as my macro lens now that I’ve officially upgraded to this baby.

One of the numerous thunderheads that passed us on their way east, towards Mt. Hood. Yesterday was hot and unbearably humid, though any southerner or midwesterner would have laughed and shook their heads. Summer in the Pacific Northwest is, for the most part, a dry heat with humidity levels hanging around 30%, sometimes lower, in the hottest months, so it’s always an unwelcome change when it soars past that magic number.